Hamas Moving HQ from Syria to Egypt, Warns Netanyahu

Hamas is moving its headquarters from Damascus to Egypt, and the terror group is strengthening itself in the Sinai, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee Monday.

He also noted that the Muslim Brotherhood, from which Hamas sprung, also has become a more powerful force in Egypt since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. The Prime Minister stated his concern about the inability of the provisional military regime in Egypt to exercise sovereignty in the Sinai, which borders Israel and from where Bedouin and Hamas terrorists smuggle weapons from Iran, Sudan, Syria and elsewhere into Gaza.

Al-Qaeda also has brought 400 terrorists into the area, according to an Egyptian official quoted by an Arab news agency,

The Prime Minister confirmed previous reports that Hamas supreme leader Khaled Mashaal has pulled out of Damascus, where his presence and welcome by Syrian President Bashar Assad is an additional worry for him in the face of the continuing uprising.

The vacuum of power in the Sinai has been illustrated by “the two gas explosions that occurred there” this year, Prime Minister Netanyahu told the Knesset committee. “Global terrorist organizations are interfering, there and their presence is increasing because of the geographic connection between Sinai and Gaza."

The Sharon government agreed to pull out of Gaza following the 2005 expulsion of nearly 10,000 Jews in the area. Agreements with Egypt on security in the Sinai began falling apart after Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza four years ago.

Following the Operation Cast Lead counterterrorist campaign at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, Israel relied on American and European guarantees to monitor the transfer of goods and merchandise from the Sinai to Gaza, but these also have eroded. The opening of the Rafiah crossing this past Saturday has further harmed security.

The de facto dominance of Bedouin tribes and allied terrorists in the Sinai has set the stage for further stockpiling of advanced arms by Hamas and for plotting terrorist attacks at tourist and holy sites in Egypt.

Egyptian Woman Tells of 'Virginity Tests'

By Samiha Shafy in Cairo

The Egyptian military was celebrated for helping to facilitate a peaceful revolution there three months ago. But now accusations have surfaced that they subjected young women to degrading "virginity tests" in what appears to have been an attempt to control the population. One woman told SPIEGEL her story.

Before she describes how uniformed soldiers hit and kicked her and the other young women, ordering them to take off their clothes, lie on their backs in front of gawking soldiers and spread their legs so a man in a white lab coat could test their virginity  before this, the hairdresser quickly lights a cigarette and pulls the smoke deeply into her lungs.

Salwa Husseini Gouda is a petite woman with gently curved lips and almond-shaped eyes. The 20-year-old looks tired this afternoon, wearing jeans and a headscarf together with a tight-fitting top. She smokes one cigarette after another. The air is heavy with shimmering heat and the Egyptian capital is dusty and loud, as always.

"I have no idea why they arrested me, of all people, in Tahrir Square," she says. "I was standing in front of a tank at that particular moment, maybe that's why." She attempts a grin. "Anyway, people should watch out for me  I'm a dangerous criminal!"

According to eyewitness reports, men stormed Tahrir Square, center of the Egyptian revolution, on the afternoon of March 9 and attacked demonstrators seemingly at random. They weren't wearing uniforms. "They looked like thugs," Husseini Gouda says. "They called me a whore and hit me in the face." She says she was shocked when the group dragged her and around 20 other women into the Egyptian Museum and handed them over to the military. "I couldn't believe our army was behind this attack," Gouda continues. "But then they took us to a military prison, and from then on, it only got worse."

'Shocking and Degrading Treatment'

On the day Husseini Gouda was arrested, Hosni Mubarak, the country's deposed president, had been in self-imposed exile in the seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheik for nearly four weeks. A month before the arrest, the masses at Tahrir Square had cheered for the military, which took over power in the country after Mubarak resigned. "The people and the army are one," demonstrators shouted, dancing and celebrating in front of the tanks. Mothers pressed their babies into soldiers' arms for pictures. The world watched Egypt with amazement, seeing men and women, Muslims and Christians, fighting side by side for freedom. Then, 18 days later, the revolution was, the pharaoh chased off. The people were victorious. It was a triumph that belonged to women as well  or so it seemed at the time.

When Husseini Gouda arrived at the military prison on March 9, she says she was led to a small room together with two other women. There they were forced to undress and allow their clothing to be searched. Then they noticed a soldier standing outside the open window, photographing them naked. "I was afraid they would use the pictures to make us look like prostitutes," Husseini Gouda says.

That night, the women were locked in a cell and given water and bread that stank of kerosene. The next day, they saw a stretcher in the hallway outside their cell. Here, an officer announced, a doctor would inspect the unmarried women for virginity. "We couldn't believe it," Husseini Gouda says. "We asked if it could at least be a female doctor, but he said no. One girl who tried to resist was plied with electroshocks."

Several human rights organizations are investigating the events that occurred at the military prison in Heikstep northeast of Cairo between March 9 and 13. Amnesty International has called on Egyptian authorities to "stop the shocking and degrading treatment of women protesters." The European Parliament denounced the "forced virginity tests" as torture.

Psychiatrist Mona Hamed, from El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, has documented statements from several of the women who were arrested on March 9, including Husseini Gouda. Hamed's conclusion: "What's new is that it isn't the police or the secret police behind this, but the military." The virginity tests, she says, send a message to the people, because the army wants to control citizens' freedom of movement. If a woman at a demonstration were beaten or arrested, Hamed says, her family would perhaps be able to accept that  but not the charge that their daughter is a prostitute. "That's an unthinkable humiliation for the woman and her family," she explains.

A Confused Army

Husseini Gouda didn't resist. The man in the white lab coat reached between her legs, and it didn't take long. He permitted her to cover herself with a blanket, to shield her from the gaze of the soldiers loitering in the hallway. "It was horribly humiliating," Husseini Gouda says. After the procedure, she continues, all of the women had to sign a form that stated whether they were virgins or not. But after the doctor confirmed that her hymen was intact, the soldiers confronted her with new accusations, Husseini Gouda says. Two days later, she was sentenced by a military court to one year of probation for the alleged possession of a weapon, property damage and violating curfew.

"The situation for women has deteriorated continually, these last few decades," says Hala Mustafa, 52, a political scientist and the editor-in-chief of the magazine al-Dimuqratiya. "On the one hand, this is because of political Islamization by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists. On the other, it's because the regime too has done everything in its power to keep the people conservative, so they don't rebel."

Mustafa, with her light brown, layered haircut, pantsuit and white gold jewelry, is one of the country's liberal, progressive thinkers. She just canceled a trip abroad because she couldn't possibly miss what's happening in Egypt now, she says. For a moment, a smile appears on her face, the same smile worn by many Egyptians these days, a mixture of amazement and pride. It's too soon to make predictions, Mustafa says, but she's not particularly optimistic: "The old regime is still functioning."

Recently, the people's insubordination seems to be causing some confusion for the army. Human rights organizations say thousands of Egyptians have been imprisoned, tortured and brought before military courts in the last weeks. The military has restricted the public's rights to strike and to demonstrate, with emergency law and a curfew from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. still in effect.

'They Weren't Virgins in the First Place'

Journalist Rasha Azeb, 28, has experienced the revolution firsthand from the beginning. She too was arrested on March 9 and taken to the Egyptian Museum. "We kept protesting after February 11, because we wanted to get rid of the whole regime, not just Mubarak," Azeb explains. She wears a ribbon around her neck from which a bullet casing dangles. You can say what you want now about Mubarak and the members of his government who have been arrested, Azeb says, "but not about the military council."

Azeb is sitting on a rooftop terrace in downtown Cairo, a sand-colored sea of houses below her stretching to the horizon. "The soldiers bound my hands and hit me," she says. "They said that the violence was increasing because of journalists. After four hours, they let me and my colleagues go." Azeb says she saw other women being hit and abused with electroshocks in the museum. She didn't find out until days later what happened to them afterward. It's intolerable, she says, and yet this isn't the moment to talk about sexual discrimination. "Right now it's about the Egyptian people's rights," Azeb believes, "not about men or women."

Still, the women among the freedom fighters in Tahrir Square also impressed the world precisely because they disproved a cliché. The World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report, which evaluates gender equality in 134 countries, ranked Egypt 125th in 2010. Forty-two percent of Egyptian women can't read or write and most don't have a profession. Female genital mutilation has been outlawed since 1997, but is still widespread. Women out in the capital without a male chaperone must expect to be sexually harassed.

Last Tuesday, nearly three months after Husseini Gouda and the others were arrested, an army general finally issued a statement. "The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general told American news channel CNN. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with mail (male?) protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs)." The virginity tests, he said, were carried out so that the women couldn't claim afterward to have been harassed or raped in prison: "We wanted to show that they were not virgins in the first place."

Amnesty International called this reaction "an utterly perverse justification of a degrading form of abuse" and called on Egyptian authorities to hold the parties responsible accountable. The army's reply came promptly: The women's allegations, an army spokesperson announced, are unfounded.

Re: Egypt Revolts, and now women are forced to take ''virginity tests''

Nope, there's no reason why other than they want to duck the subject for being wrong about what's going on in Egypt. Any other reason is pretend, because there are plenty of subjects I can post about where they're moths to a flame.

Re: Egypt Revolts, and now women are forced to take ''virginity tests''

. . . hence my point. Some are pretending not to reply because of ad-iotunnem (figure that one out), but yes, it's shame out of being wrong and seeing infinitely worse in the place of Mubarak as the Shah was replaced by infinitely worse in Iran back in 1979.

Egypt Opposes U.S.'s Democracy Funding

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

CAIRO—A U.S. plan to fund the democratic transition in Egypt has led to a confrontation with the country's new rulers, who are suspicious of American aims and what they see as political interference in the aftermath of President Hosni Mubarak's downfall.

Senior Egyptian officials have warned nongovernment organizations that taking U.S. funding would damage the country's security. The Egyptian government has also complained directly to the U.S.

"I am not sure at this stage we still need somebody to tell us what is or is not good for us—or worse, to force it on us," Fayza Aboul Naga, who has been Egypt's minister for planning and international cooperation since before the revolution, told The Wall Street Journal.

Such strong reaction has led U.S. officials to express concern that the Mubarak regime's resistance to democratic freedoms has yet to be shaken off by the new military-controlled government, which is overseeing the country until elections slated for September.

"Even though there has been a change at a certain level of the system, the system is still there," said a U.S. official.

Shortly after Mr. Mubarak's ouster, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said some of the $250 million in annual economic aid for Egypt would be redirected to "support the transition and assist the economic recovery."

In March, the U.S. Agency for International Development published ads in Egyptian newspapers asking for grant proposals on a $100 million program to support "job creation, economic development and poverty alleviation" and a $65 million program for "democratic development," including elections, civic activism and human rights.

Egyptian officials, who insist they should be allowed to vet or select recipients, were incensed by USAID's bypassing the government to solicit proposals directly from the public. They reacted with fury when a line of applicants snaked on the street to USAID's offices in a Cairo suburb, and USAID organized seminars to explain the application procedures to packed audiences outside the capital.

"This is a behavior that we are unable to fully comprehend," Ms. Aboul Naga says. Egypt never assented to the reprogramming of the economic aid, and has yet to be told from what existing programs the money will be cut, she adds.

An April editorial in the state-owned al Akhbar newspaper railed that USAID "dealt with Egypt as a humiliated country," and called for refusing American assistance.

Ms. Aboul Naga, backed by the military and the foreign ministry, has protested to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo complaining that USAID's actions violated Egypt's sovereignty.

She says bypassing the government in offering USAID grants contradicts a 1978 agreement between Egypt and the U.S. that mandates that all economic assistance must be channeled through the government.

Egypt's reaction surprised American officials. USAID's call for proposals was "pretty innocuous," a U.S. official says. "We meant no impingement of Egypt's dignity and no disrespect. The lion's share of our existing relationship is government-to-government."

In late April, U.S. Ambassador Margaret Scobey said in a statement that in the Mubarak era, "funding to strengthen and expand Egypt's civil society, including those brave Egyptians struggling for democracy and human rights…was often labeled 'interference.'…I hope, after January 25, this line has changed."

The Mubarak regime has long argued that American funding for activists working on democracy and human-rights issues undermined Egypt's stability. Some of the human-rights, media and pro-democracy groups that benefited from that aid turned out to play a key role in the Egyptian revolution.

Egypt's new prime minister was chosen with the blessing of the activists who helped to push Mr. Mubarak from power on Feb. 11, and the new military-led government has authorized once-banned parties, released political prisoners and taken other steps to prepare for free elections. Yet, much of Egypt's current bureacracy is a holdover from the old system.

"We're still ruled by the Mubarak regime without Mubarak," says Negad el-Borai, chairman of the United Group, a law firm and human-rights organization that has received U.S. funding for some of its projects.

Mr. Mubarak was also a U.S. ally, and the U.S. continues to provide $1.3 billion in annual military assistance to Egypt, and is planning to relieve $1 billion in debt, channeling that money into projects that create jobs.

USAID doesn't fund any Egyptian political movements directly, but supports workshops and seminars where budding political activists learn how to write party platforms, raise funds and campaign.

The two most visible U.S. groups that work on democracy and governance with USAID funding here, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, still haven't been able to secure official registration. American officials say they frequently raise the problem with authorities.

Ms. Aboul Naga, asked about the issue said it has become "rather irrelevant" with "the former regime completely disappearing and with the whole nation now vibrantly and vividly pushing forward towards a determined route of democracy."

Some of the expected beneficiaries of parliamentary elections, slated for September, are the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups that have been legalized and now expect to convert their strong popular followings into political power.

Such groups have long condemned USAID's pro-democracy projects as aiming to strengthen their secularist and pro-Western opponents.

Most Egyptian NGOs have political leanings—and enabling a secular organization to deliver services or create jobs on the ground could offset the influence of charities backed by the Islamists, potentially swaying the election races. Hafiz Salama, one of Egypt's most influential Islamist clerics, condemned American plans to support the democratic transition in a recent interview.

"We tell America and its allies lurking in Egypt: end your evil interference in Egypt's internal affairs, interference that we condemn as a conspiracy against the future of Egypt," he said.

New Egypt? 7,000 civilians jailed since Mubarak fell

Posted on Monday, 06.13.11By MOHANNAD SABRYMcClatchy Newspapers

CAIRO — Egypt's military rulers told human rights advocates Monday that at least 7,000 civilians have been sentenced to prison terms by military courts since Hosni Mubarak was ousted  an astoundingly high number likely to fuel debate over how much the revolution has changed the country.

Advocates said the military promised to review the cases and vacate any improper guilty verdicts and commute the sentences. But the advocates voiced skepticism and demanded more information about civilians in military custody.

"This is not the first time they've promised," said Mona Seif, a member of a rights group called No Military Trials that met with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Egypt's ruling body. "We were offered no guarantees whatsoever."

The use of military courts to try people who've been detained in anti-government protests in recent months is highly charged here. One of the complaints against Mubarak's regime was that it silenced dissidents by quickly prosecuting them in military courts. The caretaker government that took over after Mubarak's resignation has done little to alter the practice, however.

Seif said the military council told her group that 7,000 civilians had been tried in military courts since Mubarak resigned Feb. 11 and other cases were pending. But the council offered no details, Seif said. "We asked the council to provide the exact number and the names of any civilian held by military police," she said.

Before Monday's meeting, No Military Trials had demanded a halt to military trials of civilians, unless violations occur in military zones or facilities. It also asked that the government guarantee the security of peaceful gatherings and protests and release five oil field workers who were detained during a recent strike.

On Monday, the group announced a hotline to report cases of military violations, detentions or abuse.

Heba Morayef, a Cairo representative for Human Rights Watch who met with the council last week, said the military defended its use of military courts in civilian cases because of the heightened level of crime. She said it was hard to know the accuracy of the 7,000 figure the government cited.

The role of the military in arresting political dissidents and peaceful protesters became a major topic after military police stormed into Tahrir Square on March 9, nearly a month after Mubarak's resignation, and arrested 173 protesters who'd gathered there, including 17 women; military courts subsequently sentenced 123 of them to three to five years in prison.

After two months of protests, the military eventually agreed to retry the 123 and they all were released in May.

But complaints about the military's use of emergency laws that have been in effect since the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat continue.

Last week, a conference on political prisoners hosted by the Egyptian Lawyers' Syndicate and sponsored by the General Human Rights Committee and the Political Prisoners Rights Committee demanded the unconditional pardon and release of all political prisoners jailed during Mubarak's three-decade reign.

"Political prisoners are still suffering injustice and discrimination after the January 25 revolution," said Mamdouh Ismaiel, a member of the lawyers' syndicate's board of directors.

"Some activists were jailed in 1992 after suffering illegitimate and unfair military prosecutions," he said. "They are still suffering behind bars, just as they did under the former regime."

Re: Egypt Revolts, increase violence against Copts and their churches

Egypt: Muslim extremists 'surround church and threaten to kill priest'

Minya, 24 June (AKI)  Hundreds of Muslim extremists surrounded a church in central Egypt and threatened to kill the local priest, the Assyrian International News Agency reported. The extremists began targeting the church in a village 7 kilometers south of the city of Minya in March after renovation work began, threatening to demolish the church.

AINA Friday cited eyewitnesses as saying that the Muslim mob, dressed in white robes and long beards, chanted: "We will kill the priest, we will kill him and no one will prevent us."

One of their leaders was cited as saying they would "…cut him to pieces," AINA reported.

The priest was Father George Thabet, who was holding morning mass and was locked in the church with several parishioners. Security forces arrived five hours later and escorted the priest away in a police car to the Coptic Diocese in Minya.

Coptic youths who were attending mass remained inside St George's church to defend it from Muslim attacks.

No police or security of any kind was present during the standoff, according to reports.

The archdiocese of Minya issued a statement deploring the incident and the "return of the Salafists to besiege St. George's church again, some carrying weapons, threatening to kill the priest unless he leaves the village."

The statement called on government officials and security authorities uphold rule of law and maintaining security in the country.

On 23 March, hardline Muslims had surrounded the 100-year old church, which was granted a renovation licence, and ordered the church officials to stop construction immediately and undo what they had completed, threatening to demolish the church if their demands were not met.

The extremists also ordered church authorities removed Thabet from Beni Ahmad village and gave him and his family a time limit of 35 days, later extended to 50 days, to leave. The Muslims accused him of making extensions to the church and of causing sectarian strife.

The Coptic Christians account for about 10 percent of Egypt's population and have been repeatedly targeted by Muslim extremists.

Twenty-four people were killed and around 100 injured in a New Year's Eve bombing of a Coptic church in the northern Egyptian port city of Alexandria. The bloody attack sparked rioting and protests and drew international condemnation.

Re: Egypt Revolts; Muslim Brotherhood are de-facto rulers

Column One: The real Egyptian revolution

By CAROLINE B. GLICK06/03/2011 16:43

As Muslim Brotherhood gains more power, the IDF must expand its draft rolls and increase its force size by at least one division.

The coverage of recent events in Egypt is further proof that Western elites cannot see the forest for the trees. Over the past week, leading newspapers have devoted relatively in-depth coverage to the Egyptian military authorities’ repressive actions in subduing protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo, particularly during their large protest last Friday.

That is, they have provided in-depth coverage of one spent force repressing another spent force. Neither the military nor the protesters are calling the shots anymore in Egypt, if they ever were. That is the job of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The proximate cause of last Friday’s mass demonstration was what the so-called Twitter and Facebook revolutionaries consider the military’s slowness to respond to their demand for ousted president Hosni Mubarak’s head on a platter. The military responded by announcing that Mubarak and his sons will go on trial for capital crimes on August 3.

Beyond bloodlust, the supposedly liberal young sweethearts of the Western media are demanding a cancellation of the results of the referendum held in March on the sequencing of elections and constitutional reform. Voting in that referendum was widely assessed as the freest vote in Egyptian history. Seventy-seven percent of the public voted to hold parliamentary and presidential elections in September and to appoint members of a constitutional assembly from among the elected members of the next parliament to prepare Egypt’s new constitution.

The protesters rightly assert that the early elections will pave the way for the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover of Egypt, since the Brotherhood is the only well-organized political force in Egypt. But then, the liberals said they wanted popular rule.

The Facebook protesters demanded Mubarak’s immediate removal from power in January. They would not negotiate Mubarak’s offer to use the remainder of his final term to shepherd Egypt towards a quasi-democratic process that might have prevented the Brotherhood from taking over.

In their fantasy world  which they inhabit with Western intellectuals  the fates of nations are determined by the number of “likes” on your Facebook page. And so, when they had the power to avert the democratic Islamist takeover of their country in January, they squandered it.

Now, when it is too late, they are trying to win through rioting what they failed to win at the ballot box, thus discrediting their protestations of liberal values.

Their new idea was spelled out last week at an EU-sponsored conference in Cairo. According to the Egyptian media, they hope to convince the military they protest against to stack the deck for the constitutional assembly in a way that prevents the Brotherhood from controlling the proceedings. As Hishan el-Bastawisy, a former appellate judge and presidential hopeful explained, “What we can push for now is that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has to put some guarantees of choosing the constituent assembly in the sense that it does not reflect the parliamentary majority.”

So much for Egypt’s liberal democrats.

AS FOR the military, its actions to date make clear that its commanders do not see themselves as guardians of secular rule in Egypt. Instead, they see themselves as engines for a transition from Mubarak’s authoritarian secularism to the Brotherhood’s populist Islamism.

Since forcing Mubarak to resign, the military junta has embraced Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. They engineered the Palestinian unity government which will pave the way for Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian Authority’s legislative and presidential elections scheduled for the fall.

Then there is Sinai. Since the revolution, the military has allowed Sinai to become a major base not only for Hamas but for the global jihad. As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned on Monday, Egyptian authorities are not asserting their sovereignty in Sinai and jihadists from Hamas, al-Qaida and other groups are inundating the peninsula.

Last week’s move to open Egypt’s border with Gaza at the Rafah passage is further proof that the military has made its peace with the Islamic takeover of Egypt. While the likes of The New York Times make light of the significance of the move by pointing to the restrictions that Egypt has placed on Palestinian travel, the fact is that the Egyptians just accepted Hamas’ sovereignty over an international border.

Many in the West argue that given Egypt’s increasingly dire economic situation, there is no way the military will turn its back on the US and Europe. By all accounts, Egypt is facing economic collapse. By summer’s end it will be unable to feed its population due to grain shortages. By November, its foreign reserves will have dried up.

But rather than do everything they can to convince foreign investors and governments that Egypt’s market is safe, the military junta is taking steps that destroy the credibility of the Egyptian market. To please both the Mubarak-obsessed protesters at Tahrir Square and the Muslim Brotherhood, the military refuses to reinstate natural gas shipments to Israel.

Not only is Egypt denying itself hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues by cutting off gas shipments to Israel (and Jordan, Syria and Lebanon). It is destroying its reputation as a credible place to do business. And according to the New York Times, it is also making it impossible for the Obama administration to help the Egyptian economy. The Times’ reported this week that the US tied President Barack Obama’s pledge of $1 billion in debt forgiveness and $1 billion in loan guarantees to the Egyptian authorities asserting sovereignty in northern Sinai. Presumably this means they must renew gas shipments to Israel and fight terror.

The fact that the military would rather facilitate Egypt’s economic collapse than take the unpopular step of renewing gas shipments to Israel ought to end any thought that economic interests trump political sentiments. This situation will only get worse when the Muslim Brotherhood takes over Egypt in September.

AND MAKE no mistake. They intend to take over. As they did in the lead up to March’s constitutional referendum, the Brotherhood is using its mosques as campaign offices. The message is clear: If you are a good Muslim you will vote for the Muslim Brotherhood.

When Mubarak was overthrown in January, the Brotherhood announced it would only contest 30% of the parliamentary seats. Last month the percentage rose to 50. In all likelihood, in September the Brotherhood will contest and win the majority of the seats in the Egyptian parliament.

When Mubarak was overthrown, the Brotherhood announced it would not run a candidate for president. And when Brotherhood Shura governing council member and Physicians Union leader Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh announced last month that he is running for president, the Brotherhood quickly denied that he is the movement’s candidate. But there is no reason to believe them.

According to a report Thursday in Egypt’s Al- Masry al-Youm’s English edition, the Brotherhood is playing to win. They are invoking the strategies of the movement’s founder, Hassan al-Banna, for establishing an Islamic state. His strategy had three stages: indoctrination, empowerment and implementation. Al-Masry al-Youm cites Khairat al- Shater, the Brotherhood’s “organizational architect,” as having recently asserted that the Brotherhood is currently in the second stage and moving steadily towards the third stage.

Now that we understand that they are about to implement their goal of Islamic statehood, we need to ask what it means for Egypt and the region.

On Sunday, Brotherhood Chairman Mohammed Badie gave an interview to Egyptian television that was posted on the Muslim Brotherhood’s English website iquwanweb.com. Badie’s statements indicated that the Brotherhood will end any thought of democracy in Egypt by taking control over the media. Badie said that the Brotherhood is about to launch a public news channel, “with commitment to the ethics of the society and the rules of the Islamic faith.”

He also demanded that state radio and television begin broadcasting recordings of Banna’s speeches and sermons. Finally, he complained about the anti-Brotherhood hostility of most private media organs in Egypt.

As for Israel, Badie was asked how a Brotherhood-led Egypt would react if Israel takes military action against Hamas. His response was honest enough. As he put it, “The situation will change in such a case, and the Egyptian people will have their voice heard. Any government in power will have to respect the choice of the people, whatever that is, like in any democracy.”

In other words, the peace between Israel and Egypt will die of populist causes.

SO FAR, Israel’s responses to these strategically disastrous developments have been muted and insufficient. On Wednesday, the Defense Ministry announced that Israel is speeding up construction of the border fence between Egypt and Israel. The 210-km.-long fence is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2012.

While this is an important move given Gaza’s effective fusion into Sinai with the border opening, it does not address the looming threat from Egypt itself. It does not address the fact that with Mubarak’s ouster, a previously all-but unthinkable outbreak of hostilities with Egypt has now become eminently thinkable.

Facing the prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt in September, Israel’s government must begin preparing both diplomatically and militarily for a new confrontation with Egypt.

The West’s intoxication with the myth of the Arab Spring means that currently, the political winds are siding with Egypt. If Egypt were to start a war with Israel, or simply support Hamas in a war against Israel, at a minimum, Cairo would enjoy the same treatment from Europe and the US that the Hezbollah-dominated Lebanese government and army enjoyed in 2006. To block this possibility, the government must begin educating opinion shapers and political leaders in the West about the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood It must also call for a cut-off of US military aid to Egypt.

Militarily, the government must increase the size of the IDF’s Southern Command. The Egyptian armed forces have more than a million men under arms. Egypt’s arsenal includes everything from F-16s to Abrams tanks to first-class naval ships to ballistic missiles to sophisticated pontoon bridges for crossing the Suez Canal.

The IDF must expand its draft rolls and increase its force size by at least one division. It must also begin training in desert warfare and develop and purchase appropriate conventional platforms.

With the Iranians now apparently moving from developing nuclear capabilities to developing nuclear warheads, and with the Palestinians escalating their political war and planning their next terror war against Israel, it stands to reason that nobody in the government or the IDF wants to consider the strategic implications of Egypt’s reversion from peace partner to enemy.

But Israel doesn’t get to decide what our neighbors do. We can only take the necessary steps to minimize their ability to harm us.

Harassment of women rampant in Egypt

Even after the revolution women complain of catcalls and disrespect from men

CAIRO: Mohammad Anter hands out flyers to evening crowds on a packed Cairo street, trying to catch the attention of any passerby — until one catches his.

"Hey, hot chic!" he yells. "You have beautiful eyes!" Anter is a computer science student and salesman at a small shop here; he is one of Cairo's many casual harassers.

"We're an Eastern culture, so it's all right for me to yell out — when I'm attracted to someone, I do it," he says, surrounded by fluorescent store lights and shoppers in every direction.

Anter is not alone: The Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights found in a 2008 study that 83 percent of women are sexually harassed and roughly half of Egypt's women experience such treatment on a daily basis.

Many thought that men like Anter had changed during Egypt's uprising five months ago. When hundreds of thousands converged on Tahrir Square in a collective effort to oust President Hosni Mubarak, men and women stood side by side in unified protests with few instances of sexual harassment.

But while activists say the revolution was a step in the right direction, the popular demand for greater freedom has not necessarily brought a greater recognition of women's rights or reprieve from harassment.

"Just because Mubarak stepped down doesn't make people any more educated or aware of how to behave appropriately and respectfully," says Amy Mowafi, editor of an Egyptian women's magazine called Enigma.

Activists are seeking to make people more aware, however, most recently with a June 20 Twitter campaign under the hashtag #endSH. Offline, Nazra for Feminist Studies is working on building a grassroots feminist movement. And in early June, an Egyptian women's Charter was released with half a million signatures of people calling for women's social and political representation and equal economic and legal rights.

The old ways

Down the street from Anter, a group of young men guarding their carts of colored T-shirts say they didn't have time to think about hassling women during Egypt's 18-day uprising; they were concerned with political aims. Now they're back to their monotonous jobs and catcalling is a way to pass the time and make casual jokes.

"It's normal — people here really like to laugh, so it's OK," says one man.

"See that girl?" asks another man, Ahmad Mahfouz. He points to a woman with flowing black hair, wearing a short-sleeve shirt. "We'd yell out to her because she likes the attention. That's why she dresses like that."

But farther down the street Abdul Azim admits that it's not just the less conservatively dressed women who get unwanted attention.

"Usually we hassle the girls who dress inappropriately," he says. "And veiled girls who are extremely beautiful — then we can't help it."

Anter says men wouldn't harass women so much if they could get married younger, though activists denounce that as an unacceptable excuse. Local tradition requires that men have an average of 15,000 Egyptian pounds (Dh9,250) before formally asking a woman's hand in marriage. The 25-year-old, who works two jobs, has been unofficially engaged for more than two years. He still doesn't have enough money to get married.

"Egyptians are conservative," says Fatma Emam, a research associate at women's rights organization Nazra, "so people don't get involved in sexual relations until they are married. They find sexual harassment a way to express their sexual frustration."

Azim says delayed marriage is one of the reasons for harassment, but explains that married men harass women too.

Oppression

Activist and feminist Nawal Al Sadaawi, who has fought for Egyptian women's rights for decades, suggests that sexual harassment is part of a broader oppression of women in Egyptian society.

"We are oppressed by the patriarchal class system… . We are oppressed by power — military power, class oppression, and money," she says. "So we have to connect harassment to political and economic harassment."

She says the toppling of Mubarak was the first step in effecting change for women. But lasting change will likely take many years.

One draws parallels to an argument made by writer Frantz Fanon, who believed women's participation in the Algerian Revolution would change social relations forever. "And of course he was 100 per cent wrong," says Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "As soon as the war was over, things went exactly to the way they were."

Back on one of downtown's dusty streets, as the evening grew late, Anter's phone rang. "My fiancée just called and broke off our engagement," he says, his eyes heavy. "Her family is tired of waiting."

Dozens killed as thousands riot in Cairo's Tahrir Square

By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent9:00PM BST 09 Oct 2011

At least 23 Egyptian Christians were killed last night as the country's worst religious violence since February's overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the former president, convulsed the capital Cairo.

The city's fabled Tahrir Square, where people power triumphed over state oppression just eight months ago, resonated to the sound of gunfire and exploding tear gas canisters as rioting Coptic protesters clashed with the Egyptian army and gangs of unknown provenance.

It remains unclear who instigated the confrontation between the Copts, who have been staging regular demonstrations to protest the growing number of attacks on their churches, and the army.

At least three soldiers were reportedly killed after they were overcome by Christian rioters who seized their rifles and turned them against the army, bringing the total number of deaths in last night's violence to 19.

Witnesses said the army had also opened fire with live ammunition, and that one soldier had plowed an armored personnel carrier into a group of peaceful protesters holding crosses and singing hymns, running over at least five of them.

The bloody scenes prompted fears that Egypt is drawing ever closer to a sustained religious conflict that cannot be controlled. There were reports of violence erupting in several Egyptian towns and cities with large Christian populations in the aftermath of the pandemonium in Cairo.

Egypt's leaders appealed for calm from both the country's Muslim and Christian communities.

"The only beneficiary of these events and acts of violence are the enemies of the January Revolution and the enemies of the Egyptian people, both Muslim and Christian," Essam Sharaf, Egypt's interim prime minister, said in a statement.

Egypt's Coptic community, which accounts for 10 percent of the country's 80 million-strong population, has felt increasingly threatened since Mubarak's fall — even though Christians participated in the revolution that overthrew him.

Thirteen Copts were killed in May, and another 10 two months earlier, after Christian protests were attacked by suspected Islamists.

Yesterday's march, which attracted 10,000 Copts, was the latest in a series of demonstrations against anti-Christian violence and the army's perceived reluctance to protect the Community.

As they marched towards the state television building, the focal point of the recent demonstrations, the protesters were attacked by a mob, which set about them with sticks and glass bottles. There were also claims that gunshots were fired at the marchers from a car.

As they progressed, the Christians were repeatedly struck by projectiles thrown from the balconies of nearby homes and even from the upper floors of the state television building itself, witnesses said, and by the time the army arrived, the Copts were seething.

Late last night, more violence broke out near the hospital where the bodies of those killed in the rioting earlier in the evening were taken.

Egyptian jailed for Facebook Islam insult

By Samer al-AtrushOctober 22, 2011

An Egyptian court sentenced a man to three years in jail with hard labour on Saturday for insulting Islam in postings on Facebook, the official MENA news agency reported.

The Cairo court found that Ayman Yusef Mansur "intentionally insulted the dignity of the Islamic religion and attacked it with insults and ridicule on Facebook," the agency reported.

The court said his insults were "aimed at the Noble Koran, the true Islamic religion, the Prophet of Islam and his family and Muslims, in a scurrilous manner," the agency reported.

It did not provide details on what he had written that was deemed to be offensive.

Mansur was arrested in August after police tracked him down through his internet address.

Egyptian law outlaws insults to religion. The law has been used in the past to try Shiite Muslims.

MENA did not mention Mansur's religion or beliefs, but quoted the court as saying that "all members of religions are obligated to tolerate the others' existence."

In 2007, a court sentenced blogger Kareem Amer to jail for insulting the Muslim prophet and then president Hosni Mubarak. He was released last year.

Egypt, the most populous Arab country, follows the French legal system but its constitution, suspended since the military took over after an uprising ousted Mubarak in February, stipulates that Islam is the main source of law.

The country is also home to the Middle East's largest Christian population, roughly 10 percent of its 80 million population.

Mansur's conviction comes at a time of mounting fears that Islamists will sweep the country's first parliamentary elections after Mubarak's ouster, scheduled to begin on November 28.

The Islamists want to ensure that a panel that drafts a new constitution will not remove a previous article stating that Islam is the main source of legislation, a sensitive topic that few secular politicians will openly challenge.

"This is very serious," said Heba Morayef, a Cairo-based researcher for Human Rights Watch.

The law used to convict Mansur "is a very vague provision, and it has long been the recommendation of human rights groups to remove that provision," she said.

"To sentence someone on the basis of so broad a provision will have a chilling effect in political debate, because there has been so much debate about the role of religion in the state," she said.

A civilian court convicted Mansur, but the sentencing came as the military, in power since Mubarak's ouster, faced growing criticism for alleged restrictions on the press and prosecution of bloggers.

"This comes as yet another violation of freedom of expression," Morayef said.

Re: Egypt Revolts, Coptic student murdered for wearing crucifix

Coptic Christian Student Murdered By Classmates for Wearing a Cross

By Mary AbdelmassihPosted GMT 10-30-2011 18:36:21

In mid-October, Egyptian media published news of an altercation between Muslim and Christian students over a classroom seat at a school in Mallawi, Minya province. The altercation led to the murder of a Christian student. The media portrayed the incident as non-sectarian. However, Copts Without Borders, a Coptic news website, refuted this version and was first to report that the Christian student was murdered because he was wearing a crucifix.

"We wanted to believe the official version," said activist Mark Ebeid, "because the Coptic version was a catastrophe, as it would take persecution of Christians also to schools." He blamed the church in Mallawi for keeping quiet about the incident.

Today, the parents of the 17-year-old Christian student Ayman Nabil Labib broke their silence, confirming that their son was murdered on October 16 in "cold blood, because he refused to take off his crucifix as ordered by his Muslim teacher." Nabil Labib, the father, said in a taped video interview with Copts United NGO, that his son had a cross tattooed on his wrist as per Coptic tradition, as well as another cross which he wore under his clothes.

Both parents confirmed that Ayman's classmates, who were present during the assault and whom they met at the hospital and during the funeral, said that while Ayman was in the classroom he was told to cover up his tattooed wrist cross. He refused and defiantly got out the second cross which he wore under his shirt. "The teacher nearly chocked by son and some Muslim students joined in the beating," said his mother.

According to Ayman's father, eyewitnesses told him that his son was not beaten up in the school yard as per the official story, but in the classroom. "They beat my son so much in the classroom that he fled to the lavatory on the ground floor, but they followed him and continued their assault. When one of the supervisors took him to his room, Ayman was still breathing. The ambulance transported him from there dead, one hour later."

The father said that everyone in Mallawi knew how the event took place, but not one of the students' parents was prepared to let their children come forward and give a statement to the police. "They are afraid of the school administration, which has lots of ways to harass the students, as well as being afraid of the families of the two Muslim killers."

"I insist that the Arabic teacher, the headmaster, and the supervisors should be charged as well as the two students who committed the crime," said Nabil. "The Arabic language teacher incited the students to attack my son, the headmaster who would not go to the classroom to see what is going on there when alerted to the beatings, but rather said to be left alone and continued sipping his tea, and the supervisors who failed in their supervising duties."

Prosecution has three witnesses, two men working at school who named the assailants and one student who wanted to retract his statement, but was refused."

"The evidence is under lock and key. Everyone is hiding the evidence. We will know the truth after forensic medicine has finished the report next week," said Nabil, adding that the head of detectives on the case tried to influence the witnesses, claiming that the murder took place as a result of friction between students."

The governor of Minya, El-Rouby, visited the Coptic Bishop Dimitrious of Mallawi to extend his condolences, accompanied by representatives of Minya military authorities. He also suspended the school's headmaster and the two supervisors, as well as two social workers who were on duty when Ayman died, and referedg them to an investigation committee. But all of them have disappeared since then.

After the funeral service for Ayman, over 5,000 Christians marched along the streets of Mallawi, denouncing the killing of a student whom they described as "Martyr of the Cross" and the repeated killings of Copts in Egypt.

Prominent columnist Farida El-Shobashy wrote in independent newspaper Masry Youm: "I was shaken to the bones when I read the news that a teacher forced a student to take off the crucifix he wore, and when the Christian student stood firm for his rights, the teacher quarreled with him, joined by some of the students; he was bestially assaulted until his last breath left him." She wondered if the situation was reversed and a Muslim was killed for not removing the Koran he wore, what would have been the reaction.

Farida pointed out that the gravity of the incident is where it took place and who incited the attack (the teacher). She went on to blast the Ministry of Education for neglecting the education syllabus to prevent discriminatory contents, but instead "left it to teachers to spread the fanatic Wahabi ideology."